Diet

How Your Social Life Impacts Your Diet

When it comes to getting fit and healthy, your social life can have a big impact. Some influences can be extremely positive and help you shed pounds and tone up faster, whereas others can be detrimental, causing your progress to slow right down. Whether you have a little or a lot to lose, we want to share with you some key impacts your social life can have on your diet to help you make good choices and be as fit and healthy as possible.

The Positive Impacts

When friends do well with their weight loss, you’re more likely to succeed too

Research has shown that partnering up with a gym buddy can drastically increase your weight loss success. Not only does this happen because having a friend by your side minimises your gym-phobia and gives you more motivation to attend in the first place, but also because seeing someone else lose weight helps you to work harder and push yourself further. The result? You both become fitter, healthier people! Working out with friends is also great for bonding and feeling closer. You get to share in hardship and reward, spend quality time together and even find time after for a smoothie at the local coffee shop or some downtime at the beach.

When you lose weight, you’ll have more energy to spend time with family

Whether you’re a parent, a big sister, a god-parent or daughter, you’ll know how important it is to spend quality time with family. And if there are kids in that family, you’ll need plenty of energy to keep up with them. Losing weight can have a positive impact on your energy levels. The less timber you’re dragging around, the more energy you’ll have to explore outdoor adventures with close family. And the cycle then becomes an upward spiral, because the more energy you have, the further you can then push your weight loss!

The Negative Impacts

Your partying might put pounds on you

There’s nothing shameful about having a vibrant social life. Sometimes there’s nothing more freeing than hitting the clubs with your besties, knocking back a few cocktails and letting loose on the dance floor. The problem is, what you’re putting into your body can be detrimental to your diet. Certain drinks, such as wine and beer, are very high in calories (about 120 per glass of sauvignon blanc and 220 in a pint of lager). Cocktails can also be highly calorific as they contain multiple shots and are topped with sweet fruit juices, which are high in fructose. The other problem is, after a few drinks, you’re more likely to eat something you would avoid when sober, and you may not even remember doing it the next day! Your partying lifestyle might be impacting your sleep too, so you feel more fatigued than you would if you skipped a few nights out.

Of course, there’s no reason for you to have no social life when trying to lose weight and get healthy. The most important thing is that you’re aware of how your social life can negatively and positively affect your dieting efforts. For example, if you’re going out every weekend drinking, you might want to swap one of these nights for a girly sleepover or pampering day at a local spa. You can still see your friends and have a lot of fun while staying healthy too.

Some friends won’t want you to lose weight

It can sometimes be difficult for people to accept change, and if your friends are used to you looking and behaving a certain way, they may struggle to get on board with your decision to get fit. For example, if you’re used to drinking heavily at the weekends with your buddies, they may have a reaction to you wanting to swap this for an afternoon smoothie and a morning hike. It doesn’t mean they want you to be unhealthy, but it can make it difficult to maintain a friendship if you do decide to make some lifestyle changes, and this could deter you from sticking with your plan. For this reason, it’s good to constantly remind yourself of the BENEFITS of getting fit and healthy, and find ways to connect with your friends that won’t negatively impact your diet. It’s also a neat idea to form new friendships with likeminded dieters and fitness enthusiasts so that you can share your newfound passions with people on similar paths.

About the Author

Emma Rowlands is a professional writer with a passion for health and science. Emma has years of experience working in the diet and lifestyle sector including for the UK celebrity diet club The Hairy Bikers Diet Club. Emma is part way through an undergraduate health science degree.